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### 1.3 How to Get and Install MetaQTL

MetaQTL is avalaible at http://bioinformatics.org/mqtl. As MetaQTL is entirely written in Java (1.5) it should be run on most of operating systems provided that a compatible Java Virtual Machine (1.5) has been previously installed on your machine. Otherwise go to http://java.sun.com/downloads/index.html: then download and install the last version of the Java 2 Platform. To run the programs of MetaQTL you must have updated the Java CLASSPATH by adding the path to the jar archive `metaqtl.jar` included into the MetaQTL distribution. Under an UNIX like operating system this can be done as follows

         bash$ export CLASSPATH=${CLASSPATH}:/path/to/metaqtl/directory/metaqtl.jar

Under Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP you can look at http://support.microsoft.com/ to find how to update or create the environment variable CLASSPATH. Generally, to view or change environment variables you have to apply the following steps:

- Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
- Click the Advanced tab.
- Click Environment variables.
- Click one the following options, for either a user or a system variable:
  - Click New to add a new variable name and value.
  - Click an existing variable, and then click Edit to change its name or value (here the value will be the entire file path from the root of the disk to the jar archive of MetaQTL).

In the next sections, the examples are given assuming the CLASSPATH have been correctly set.